


Lizzy's favorite story

by Grania



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), Song for Marion, Song for Marion/Unfinished Song, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24353116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grania/pseuds/Grania
Summary: A little story with elements from Avengers, Hansel and Gretel and the underrated Song for Marion.
Kudos: 3





	Lizzy's favorite story

15 years is a damn big age difference for siblings, and the relationship closer to one between parents and kid or, in better cases, mentor and student. Clint had absolutely no interest in any relationship at all when he and Barney were told that their mother was expecting another brat. He was 15, constantly angry, and alternated between wishing the future brother or sister the same life he had, because it was only fair, because it looked like revenge for a stupid teenager like him; and between hoping that both might die during birth.

* * *

He was 19, and Barney had left for the army, when the circus one summer came close to the nameless county in Iowa where mother had settled after she had left. He was more intrigued than worried when he skipped practice one afternoon, and borrowed a truck to visit the town some twenty miles over. He headed straight for the trailerpark, because duh, and asked around.

"Barton?" asked an older woman, or probably a middle-aged addict. It was hard to tell. "Yeah, lives here, down the road, last one to the left. Are you a relative?"

He took off without an answer, though of course she did not need any to give him some unwanted advice. "If you're a relative you better take that kid with you when you leave, son. Just sayin'..."

The words of the old hag rang in his ears when he stopped in front of the trailer in question, and saw his sister for the first time in his life. There was no denying that they were related. He possessed one old, worn photograph of Barney and him as kids, and the girl looked exactly like a cuter Barney, aged 2.

Except that she was supposed to be 4 years old.

She dropped the rusty bucket she had been playing with, climbed out from under the porch, and ran up to him like a yappy dog.

"Hello", she laughed, and jesus, was she like this to any stranger who came along?. She was dirty and unkempt, wore only socks and no shoes, her hair was one felty mat, and when she laughed she exposed a row of stained, brown teeth. Whatever he had expected of mother, this was infinitely worse, and for a moment he choked on regret and pain at the sight of the little girl. He climbed out of the car.

"Who are you?" she asked, and looked up at him.

He blinked. "Is your mother around?" he asked instead.

The girl shook her head. "She went out. Are you a friend?"

He laughed at that, and he crouched down to her level. "No! Not at all. I'm Clint."

"I'm Lizzy", she answered. She smiled at him, so trustfully as Clint had never seen in his life, as neither he nor Barney had ever been. Maybe it was because she had no one else. Clint had always had Barney, they had carried each other when they had been weak. She was all alone. He had to blink again.

"Do you want money from us?"

He shook his head.

"Good" she sighed, though it changed to confusion within a second. "Then why are you here?"

"I...wanted to meet you."

She frowned. "Me? Why?"

He opened his mouth, though he hesitated with an answer. "I knew your mother once...and I just wanted to meet you."

She accepted it without questioning and smiled again, sucking the undivided attention in like a dry sponge. He stayed with her for more than an hour. They sat on the steps to the door, and once her curiosity had been satisfied, she demanded a story. He only knew one, and he broke off when he recognized mother approaching.

When he closed his eyes, even twenty years later, he could see Lizzy run after the truck as he took off like the coward he was.

He had left in the middle of a sentence, without a promise, because he did not know whether he could keep it, and he had twenty miles time to get angry at himself for getting in this mess, and wishing that he had never visited. He could not take her in, not in the circus, not in the crowd he had been running with lately, and yet he could not leave her back. He asked one of the women in the ticket booth before the evening show, because she was the right mixture of intelligent and disinterested. She told him that there was an agency that took in hypothetical children who lived in a hypothetically bad environment and protected them. It sounded good, and Clint wondered why that agency had never come for Barney and him. He called CPS the next morning from a pay phone, shortly before they left town.

* * *

He was 22, Barney was gone, and Clint had left the path of the righteous far, far behind when he got news of mother's death. He cheered first, then he remembered Lizzy. He needed a while to find out where she lived, no one would give him the information through normal channels. How Lizzy had come from Iowa to Kentucky he did not know, but he found her at the right address, and observed her for a few days. There were four other children in her foster home, and it was difficult to find a moment where she was alone on the road. She looked healthier, though she did not smile anymore. None of the children from her house did, as a matter of fact. He knew that look. Eventually he simply climbed the house to her window one evening, and let himself in. Not that it was difficult. She did not scream when she found him waiting behind the door, probably because the horror coming in through the window was no worse than the horror sitting in the living room.

"It's me, Clint" he whispered, and her bewildered look changed to understanding. Then she started to cry, though silently. She closed the door, and sat down on her bed, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She jerked away when he tried to pat her shoulder. He did not know what to say.

"Our mother is dead", she eventually whispered, and answered the question he had so dreaded. He nodded. Silence stretched again, and in the dusky shadows he could see every thought on her face. She was still so small.

"Will you tell me the rest of the story? Until he comes?"

Searing hot anger boiled in his chest, but he forced his hands to remain calm, and his face to continue smiling. "I will tell you the story, and then I'll make sure he'll never come again."

* * *

He was 22, Clint had left town for barely two days, when Coulson revealed himself, and changed his life forever. Clint did not know why Coulson chose him, and why he was convinced that he was worth to be saved, but eventually he believed him, and eventually he left his old life behind.

* * *

He was 25, and had just completed his first mission on his own, when Coulson, after the second beer, asked him a question that must have bugged him for a long time.

"There's something I never understood."

"What?"

"I've observed you for almost a year before I caught you, and in that time you never did something irrational. Except once!"

Clint grinned. "And what was that?"

"You killed a car dealer in Frankfort...and I never found out why. He had had no criminal record, nothing that brought him even close to your old gang..."

He knew Clint better than Clint knew himself, and broke off when he realised the sudden rage in him. "What?"

* * *

He hit Clint over the head, the first and only time ever, and left without another word. The next morning he visited Clint in his own shabby appartment, and announced that Lizzy had found new foster parents in D.C.

She was at the door to puberty when they were reunited, and thinner than the last time, but also two heads taller, and still so quiet. She was smarter than him, already then, and did not ask too many questions about his job, or his whereabouts, and took his visits as they came. She still liked the story though, the only one he knew, and wanted to hear it every time, even though she had long since heard the real story, where the children are reunited with their crappy parents, and don’t pursue a career as witchhunters.

She liked his version better.

* * *

He was 31, Lizzy had grown into a cheerful young woman, nurtured by her endlessly patient, very normal, not perverse foster parents, when he was let loose on another target. He knew the moment he saw her over the arrow on his bow that he could not take the shot. Coulson was close to hitting him over the head again, though in the end he trusted Clint’s gut, and was rewarded beyond expectations, as history would tell. Of course he also realised why Clint spared her years before he knew it himself, but then again, that was not very difficult.

They both coped differently, mostly because Natasha was trained and drilled in all aspects of life, and Lizzy was not, but actually they carried the same burden.

He was glad when Lizzy continued to show no interest in his profession, though her decision to become nurse in a retirement home was somewhat strange. Maybe it was because one did not have to get too close to the people there, seeing that they came there to die sooner rather than later. Why she conducted the choir he could not explain.

* * *

He was 35 when it turned out that they were not alone in the universe, and when Stark founded their superhero-tower. It was a nice sentiment, something like home, or anyway, the way he imagined home, and he was only mildly embarrassed when Lizzy visited for the first time. They liked her immediately, of course, because no one could resist her cheerful quirkiness, and because the world was apparently protected by the most damaged human and extraterrestrial beings, who knew an act when they saw one.

His chest ached, though in a weirdly good way, when she dropped her smile around Bruce, Thor and Tasha, or indeed showed her real laugh to Tony or Steve.

He loved her more than words could tell, more than he probably showed, and definitely more than he deserved.


End file.
